“Please, Jimmy,” Rosalind Prescott pleaded.
Rita Swaine, staring across at the lawyer, said, “Why are you talking like that?”
“You should know. There are two reasons. One of them is that I don’t like to be double-crossed by clients.”
“No one tried to double-cross you,” she said.
“Oh, certainly not,” Mason observed sarcastically. “When you told me that you were the one Mrs. Snoops saw with Jimmy, you weren’t trying to play me for a sucker. You were just giving your imagination a few indoor calisthenics.” He turned moodily to survey Rosalind Prescott and said, “I think you’ll tell the truth.”
“Shut up, Rossy,” Driscoll warned in a low voice. “This is serious.”
Mason appraised him with hostile eyes and said, “It’d be different if you could get away with it, but you can’t get away with it. You didn’t get away with it with me, and, in the long run, you won’t get away with it with the district attorney. But, trying to get away with it is playing right into his hands. Why the devil didn’t you folks tell me the truth in the first place, and let me tell you what to do? But no, you had to go on the amateur hour, and try and dress the window so it would look all nice and pretty. So Rosalind skips out and leaves her dress where Rita can put it on. Rita catches the canary, goes up to the window so as to make sure Mrs. Snoops can see her, and finishes clipping the canary’s claws. Where she makes her mistake is in being too excited to notice that the claws on the right foot have already been clipped once. It’s the left foot which was left unfinished. But Rita painstakingly cuts the right claws twice, and leaves one of the left claws untouched.”
Rita Swaine said indignantly, “Why, I never—”
“You’re right, Mr. Mason,” Rosalind Prescott announced.
Mason shifted his eyes to her and said, “I think I’m going to like you. Tell me what happened, and tell it fast. We may not have much time. Your sister left a wide back trail. I followed it, and someone else may follow it.”